The lawsuit alleges that LA City employees use auto-delete chats to discuss business

Google Chat messages are automatically deleted after 24 hours.

The investigation into their use came during a 2023 dispute between the city and the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition, which came across the missing messages after the city approved construction of a home in Mount Washington. The security coalition was against it.

City officials admitted that using the auto-deleted messages gave employees the opportunity to communicate with people both internally and externally. They declined to explain why the practice was allowed or how it complied with the state’s public records law, which requires most records to be retained for at least two years Los Angeles Times reported on Monday.

“The city of LA has a long history of corruption and self-dealing, and this allows a platform to conduct these deals without fear of anyone finding the evidence as the chats are deleted within 24 hours,” said Jamie T . Hall, an attorney representing the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition. “The Public Records Act exists to ensure openness and transparency, and when records are intentionally deleted, it undermines democracy and encourages corruption.”

The coalition challenged the city’s approval for the single-family home. The lawsuit alleged that the coalition’s opposition to the project did not receive a fair response because city leaders held closed-door discussions in advance of a public hearing and distributed confidential reports among city employees, including aldermen’s notes and concerns about projects or objections on this topic.

The coalition said there was a pattern of holding public hearings where the issues appeared to have already been discussed and voted on privately. Attorneys for the coalition learned of the missing messages during the lawsuit’s discovery process.

Lawyers found an April 6, 2022 memo advising city employees that in individual messages as well as Google Chat messages, the conversation “is not saved and is automatically deleted after 24 hours.”

A public records request by the news outlet yielded 38 pages of messages from then-City Councilman Paul Krekorian’s office, containing everything from lunch plans to city business, including the activities of Krekorian and Democratic Mayor Karen Bass.

Another records request produced documents showing that Krekorian’s spokesman, Hugh Esten, discussed a “nomination” on Google Chat with Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez’s spokeswoman, Chelsea Lucktenberg.

Karen Richardson, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office, said the office is “gathering information and examining our processes,” but added that the office does not comment on pending litigation. The city council was scheduled to discuss the case with legal counsel in a closed meeting on December 11th.

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Mark Kenyon, president of the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition, said the city is “committed” to preserving its correspondence and hopes the city council will stop the practice of discussing business via Google Chat.

“We believe the public has the right to know what their government is doing,” he said.